In today's business climate, industry fortunes rise and fall on whether information is exchanged in an efficient manner. For example, cell phones, pagers, and the Internet have thrived because each technology allows businesses to exchange information at a moment's notice over a network. As networks become more integrated into today's society, the networks are also becoming more complex.
While an increase in complexity may provide networks with greater range and more flexibility, it also causes some difficulties. For example, when a complex network experiences faults or data errors, it may be extremely difficult to diagnose the location of the faults. While a network technician or IT professional may be able to diagnose the cause of the faults if he or she has direct access to the network, diagnosing the fault becomes even more difficult if the fault occurs at a remote location.
For example, consider a scenario where an investment company has a large private network that includes several remote network sites, where an IT professional is not present at these remote network sites. To diagnose a fault or data error on a remote network, the investment company sends an IT professional to the particular remote network experiencing the fault. After arriving at the remote network, the IT professional manually connects a test apparatus to the remote network to perform any desired tests. In some instances, the IT professional will determine that the cause of the problem lies in the remote network itself and will attempt to correct the problem. In other instances, however, the IT professional will find that the fault is not in the remote network itself, but rather is in the public network to which the remote network is connected. In this instance, the IT professional will be unable to correct the fault because the public network is likely owned by a telecommunications company or some other entity. Therefore, the IT professional does not have access to this equipment and/or is not authorized to repair it. Thus, many times the IT professional's trip is a waste, resulting in squandered expenditures for the investment company.
As the inventors have appreciated, it is desirable to have a remote network monitoring system that allows for efficient diagnosis of faults in a remote network.